Digital Convenience

Being in the age of digital photography is great on many levels. No waiting to see if a picture turned out, the ability to instantly try again, only spending money to print out pictures you really want, apps like instagram, and being able to take a halfway decent picture from your phone. However, it can have it’s downsides!

Since I’m not concerned about wasting money developing film that may yield unwanted surprises, I’m much more lax about leaving the camera in reach of Soapfi, as a result I now have about 100 pictures that look exactly like this:

(Part of me really wishes I was better at photoshop, because it just screams out for Storm Troopers or any other photoshop meme of your choice.)

Since digital makes it easy to try repeatedly for a good photo, I find that I don’t even make the effort to stage a good photo, I just expect it to eventually happen if I take enough pictures. Of course I tend to forget to even *take* pictures to begin with, it’s like I go on these photo rampages where I take fifty photos in two days, and then do nothing for three weeks, no matter how cute she is acting. My lazyness of not wanting to walk two feet to the Sarlacc Pit to retrieve the camera (since it’s most likely still hooked up to the computer from downloading the last photo rampage) is embarrassing, even for my fat azz.

I’m over due for making a photo album for the GP’s back east, and as I was going through my pictures trying to figure out where the last album had ended, I realized I didn’t have nearly enough decent pictures from the past six months to make a less than anemic album. Maybe if I put one picture per page, use a lot of text and embellishments… compared to the albums I made that first year it will be completely pathetic! What I did have was plenty of bad pictures… I mean really, I still have all 100+ of the pictures of the chair, do I really need them? Hell no…. so why can’t I bear to part with them?  Because digital storage is cheap, doesn’t take up any more space that the computer already does, and if Soapfi becomes a famous photographer some day won’t I want all her early works?????

One thing we did manage to do before we got lazy about taking pictures, was take a picture every week of Soapfi with Turtle (being science geeks we insisted on a reference subject) for her first year.  After her first birthday we managed to do one every month for about five more months, then it became a combination of Soapfi not putting up with it and us getting lazy about remembering.

So as Soapfi’s second birthday approaches, I give you her first 52 weeks:

Hopefully the copyright gods will be kind since I credited the music I used and YouTube didn’t completely pitch a fit after the upload…. this kind of stuff makes me paranoid that men in riot gear will break down my door at 1am and drag me out of the house like my own personal “V for Vendetta”. 

Broken Sleep

Midnight is the witching hour, 2am is last call, what the hell does Soapfi find so magical about 4:30am? I used to be a 911 operator, I know that 99.9% of the time, nothing good happens at 4:30am.

At her age she allegedly needs 10-12 hours of sleep a night plus a 1-3 hour nap. I say allegedly, because it was beaten unrelentingly into my head that every child is different during birthing/parenting classes. (Which we ended up calling “Go Ask Your Doctor” class because no matter what question we asked, the only answer we *ever* got was “every child is different, ask your doctor”. I am trying very hard not to sidestep into *that* particular rant.)  

We had dutifully established a routine for Soapfi, up at 7:30 am, 2 hour nap from 1-3p, in bed at 9p. And for many glorious months all was good in our home, sunshine shone out our butts, a trail of wildflowers and buttercups sprang from our steps, and we just “la la la’d” about our days (okay there was no “la la la’ing” as none of us can carry a tune).

Recently Soapfi has been waking up at 4:30am, not just because she is binky-less or had a bad dream or heard a loud noise.  Those kind of wake ups are easy, they take five minutes of holding her doing that ridiculous “shh-shh” bounce step around the room, and poof she goes right back in the crib, cuddles with Turtle, and boom out like a light.  This new thing is completely different, she is full on awake, bright and shiny and ready for the day. Lord help me, I have given birth to a <GASP> *morning person*.

Sometimes with a great amount of cajoling, we can get her to go back to sleep if we move her out of her crib and onto the single bed that’s also in the room, and sleep there with her.  But that still involves about 30-45 minutes of “get up mommy/daddy”, “read book”, “Calliou”, and her crawling all over the parent who is trying not to whimper too much while asserting that it’s still night night time and too damn early for most reasonable people to be awake. But even if she does go back to sleep, our sleep is broken, the damage has been done.

We have put spare binkys and picture books within easy reach, this mollifies her for about 30 minutes (getting us to 4:30 as opposed to 4am!) before the cheerful calls of “Mommy” and “Daddy” come bellowing across the hall. I think it’s the cheerful that I resent the most, how can she be so happy so bloody early in the morning? It’s just not natural!!

Please, please, please let this be a phase.